


Constants and Chaos

by EeveebethFejvu



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EeveebethFejvu/pseuds/EeveebethFejvu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Piero watched the coin flip up into the air, time itself began to slow. Literally.</p><p>Written for Tumblr's Natural Philosophy Appreciation Month 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constants and Chaos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/gifts).



As Piero watched the coin flip up into the air, time itself began to slow.

Literally.

Across from him, William Trimble’s bright blue eyes were burning with fiery hatred and rage. His teeth were bared, his lip sneering, his decisive cry of _‘headsssssszzzzzz’_ still ringing, sizzling, in the heavy, motionless air. The student who had produced the coin – Robert something-or-other, Piero couldn’t keep track of all his fellows, he wasn’t here at the Academy to socialize, after all – stood between them, his thumb still pointed at the sky from the flicking motion of the toss like some twisted sign of congratulations.

 _Good work, Piero,_ the gesture seemed to say, _on completely blowing this whole idiotic mess out of proportion, on building up a childish rivalry with this ignorant git to the point of fighting a bloody_ duel to the death _, no one here even_ cares _about your views on how to prevent necrosis in an amputated limb or the ethics of physician-assisted suicide or what the proper fluidic solution is for the preservation of a human heart, and now you’ve staked everything you’ve ever dreamed of and worked for – your entire bloody_ future _– on an asinine game of chance._

Piero was distantly aware of the ring of students surrounding them, tightly packed together and wriggling in agitation like a tin of live hagfish. Their frantic movements had slowed to a peculiar crawl, however. The wide sleeves of black Academy coats dragged as if through molasses as fists thrust sluggishly into the air, egging him and Trimble on, all their shouts and jeers muddled into one deep, muffled vibration of retarded sound.

But Piero only had eyes for the coin, tumbling up and up, rotating as slowly as the planet itself as it strained for the climax of its arcing flight. It glinted in the dreary gray dawn like a revolving lighthouse beam, morning light sparking off the seven milled edges of the golden rim. In the round silver center, a profiled portrait of young Empress Jessamine gazed back at him disapprovingly, her collar stiff and hair piled high, embossed eyebrows raised in question at Piero’s stupidity. As the coin continued to rotate, he glimpsed the Kaldwin heraldry – the crowned shield charged with the Four Keys to the Isles, supported by the two swans volant – outlined in gold on the reverse, taunting him with its cold formality and lack of concern for its role in his fate.

Even as he watched the coin unblinkingly, Piero knew that something in the world around him had gone very, very wrong. Time, he had once postulated as a first-year student, was not absolute and the experience of it likely shifted from observer to observer depending upon a variety of different circumstances, but _this_ … This was absurd, illogical, _impossible_ given all the known laws and theories of natural philosophy. Piero could feel his heart flutteringly frantically in his chest like a bird in a cage, his right hand still trembling from the vibrations of the dueling pistol discharging again and again to no avail, his mind racing through a hundred different scenarios of his future and all of them leading only to poverty, obscurity, and a lonely death, and it was all out of sync – no, _he_ was the one, _he_ was out of sync – with the torpid reality around him.

And then the rising coin began to slow even more, further and further, until at last it ground to a complete halt in midair, shining like a tiny silver moon eclipsing a golden sun.

The Empress’s piercing eyes stared back at him with cool finality and Piero felt his throat clench, his breath stop, his heartbeat falter.

It was going to land _heads_. 

He knew it. Piero knew it, with greater certainty and conviction than he knew his own name, and though he couldn’t have even begun to try to explain how he knew it, in that suspended moment _how_ hardly seemed to matter. There was merely the knowledge, sitting there comfortably in his brilliant and troubled brain, that there was literally no other alternative. That blasted Serkonan mathematician Bernoulli be damned, there was no fifty-fifty probability of success here, only a one-hundred-percent inevitability of that silver head shining up at the eager crowd when the coin finally landed on solid ground. In another world, Piero could have perhaps gritted his teeth and kept his superior thoughts to himself in the face of Trimble’s uneducated ranting; he could have asked the headmaster to transfer him to a different department of the Academy, far away from the intolerable idiot and his cronies; he could even have practiced with his own weaponry prototypes beforehand and maybe shot Trimble cleanly in the knee to avoid a draw. But in no other conceivable, alternate universe would this coin toss ever end in anything other than _heads_. 

The coin began to fall, revolving with unhurried grace, and what little now remained of Piero’s fighting spirit plummeted along with it.

 _No… please…_ he thought, horror rising up to replace dissipated fury. He felt the burn of welling tears in the corner of his eyes, his dry lips parted in silent shock. _I can’t leave the Academy now, I can’t, I have so much left to do here, so much left to study and learn, to experiment with and discover and publish and present to the Board._ The coin began to fall a little faster now, gaining momentum as it spun, light sparking like electricity off the crisp, clean metal. _I can’t leave the Academy, there’s nowhere else to_ go, _nowhere else in all the Isles for a natural philosopher of my caliber, and I can’t, absolutely_ can’t, _go back home now, not after everything I went through just to get here!_

Piero felt his whole body begin to shake with uncontrollable tremors, sudden sickness writhing in his stomach and a feverish throb flashing through his forehead. Never had he felt such nauseousness in his whole life, and with clinical detachment, Piero realized he was likely about to pass out, or worse. But he and the world were still out of sync and his worn leather brogues felt nailed to the ground and all he could do was stand there and watch the coin slowly, torturously, drop.

 _Please,_ he thought, silent words scattering aimlessly. _Please._ _Just one more chance. One more chance to show them what I’ve got, to show them that I’m_ right _, right about all of it, the research and theories and inventions,_ everything _. If I can just reach my full intellectual potential, I know I can outpace them, all of them, in my knowledge and innovations a hundred years ahead and more!_ He found himself gritting his teeth in utter frustration at the complete and indifferent unfairness of it all. _I know I can bring_ so much _to this world, I know I can, I just need one more chance, one more chance, damn it all! One more and I will show all of these vile, simpleminded fools the true, absolute, singular genius of my mind!_

The coin continued to fall, spiraling down and down and down.

And as it passed below Piero’s eye level, he found his resolute gaze suddenly ripped away from the coin by the sight of a strange figure.

Across from him, beyond the coin and past Trimble’s hunched shoulder, stood a young man. While the encircling students continued to yell, stamp their feet, and wave their upraised fists in ludicrously slow motion, the young man stood poised and serene in the front row, arms crossed loosely, unruffled and unaffected by the ponderously frantic movements of the students on either side of him. About Piero’s age – or even a few years younger, or possibly older, it was strangely difficult to pin down on that sharp, pale face – the young man was conspicuous amongst the academically-attired crowd in his battered brown leather jacket, faded work trousers, and salt-encrusted boots. And yet no one seemed to pay this odd interloper any mind, no one but Piero, who found himself wholly and completely arrested by the sight.

As he stared in perplexed curiosity, the young man turned his head and met Piero’s gaze with eyes blacker than the darkest ocean abyss.

The young man smiled.

Another surge of nausea crashed over Piero like a tidal wave and he swayed slightly as he felt all the blood recede from his face. But he didn’t look away from those fathomless eyes – _couldn’t_ look away, not for all the research grants and accolades in the world, not for his very _life_ – even as he sensed the continued crawling descent of the coin, the gleaming bit of metal passing below the level of his chest, his belt, his knees. The students began to lunge forward in a blur of sluggish eagerness, scrambling to get a better view of where the coin was going to land, Trimble snarling like a rabid wolfhound and throwing out an arm to keep the mob back.

The young man did not move from where he stood, merely cocked his head and smiled as if in mild amusement at the lurking fear gathering in Piero’s wide eyes. 

The coin hit the cobblestone at his feet and bounced with a shimmery metallic _ping_. The sound reverberated in Piero’s ears with the force of a gunshot, echoing again as the whirling coin arced slowly through the air and bounced a second time.

The young man glanced casually down at the coin. Their mutual gaze broken, Piero found he could move again and quickly sought the coin with frantic eyes, ignoring the way the rapid motion caused the world to careen around him in a dizzying slide. And there it was, bouncing shallowly with a final, deafening _ping_ before landing on one beveled point of its heptagonal rim. It spun leisurely, flashing gold and silver, the features of both sides obscured by Piero’s high angle. But if he tried to kneel down for a better view like some of the other students were doing, Piero was sure he would faint and he just couldn’t blackout now, couldn’t miss seeing the coin come to a final stop, even though he knew with every shuddering particle of his hyperaware being that it was, had been, and would be _heads._

The coin spun, slower, slower, agonizingly slower.

Wobbled. Leaned. Started to fall.

And Piero could see the Empress’s smooth face now. The embossed lines of her profile were clear in the morning light, pitiless eyes gazing up at the gray cloudy sky, as the coin tilted, tilted... and paused.

Time itself came to a complete halt.

Piero stared at the coin, frozen at a neat forty-five degree angle to the ground, for what felt like an endless age, and very well might have been. Then he glanced with methodical caution around at the crowd of students, at Robert, at Trimble, all as motionless as if they were carved from marble, but still so vividly living and real that the uncanniness raised the hair on the back of Piero’s neck.

When he could take the dread and suspense no longer, Piero slowly turned his eyes to the strange young man.

The young man’s smile sharpened. Arms still crossed over his chest, he raised one forefinger – long, pale, and adorned with a plain, tarnished ring – up towards the sky.

Piero felt rather than saw the coin straighten to attention, carefully retracing its path until it stood once more perpendicular to the ground.

The young man crooked his finger and flicked at the air.

And time resumed, slamming into Piero with all the force of an accidental detonation. He nearly staggered as the world sprung into frenzied motion around him, time moving not with its previous laboriousness, but with a speed that shunted him straight into sync with his customary reality. Sound whizzed like an accelerating engine back into focus, and as Piero stood still in a desperate attempt to keep his balance, the first clear thing he heard was the disbelieving shriek that erupted unbidden from Trimble’s mouth.

Piero blinked, bewildered, and looked down at the coin lying flat and still on the cobblestone at his feet.

The Kaldwin heraldry gleamed up at him in shining silver and gold, the wings of the swans raised as if in triumph.

Piero stared.

_Tails._

A roar of exclamation took over the encircling crowd, those in the first few rows shouting the coin’s verdict back to those pressed in close behind them. Quite a few gleeful students surged forward around Piero, yelling incomprehensibly in his ear and slapping his stiffened back in support, while others who clearly had favored Trimble began hurling nasty, rather personal verbal abuse in his direction. With numb detachment, Piero saw that Trimble himself was on the verge of hurling a nasty, rather physical punch at his face and was only barely being restrained by some of the more prudent, and burly, scholars. Only Robert’s face seemed to mirror Piero’s own feelings; the other student was staring at the coin with an expression of quiet dumbfoundment, as if uncertain of the reliability of his own senses.

Eventually, a few of his fellows seemed to notice Piero’s shivering tremors, his dazed countenance and less-than-healthy complexion. Steadying hands began to tug at his shoulders, trying to steer him towards a nearby bench or back towards the dormitories, but Piero resisted weakly, eyes flicking in persistent disbelief from the shining coin back up to the unruly crowd milling around him.

In the confusion of the aftermath, the black-eyed young man had disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the in-game text [_Trimble's Coin_](http://dishonored.wikia.com/wiki/Trimble's_Coin) in _The Brigmore Witches_ DLC. Inspired by _Bioshock Infinite_.


End file.
